A British human rights activist has been acquitted on all charges in one of nine duplicate cases after a court rejected allegations made against him by Indian authorities.
Reprieve told The Guardian that in over seven years and almost 150 court hearings prosecutors have supplied no credible evidence against him:
“NIA prosecutors have also had seven years to build a case, and have produced no physical evidence, no email trail, no CCTV footage, no record of a bank transfer, no notes or recordings of telephone calls.”
Reprieve’s deputy director Dan Dolan added: “For Jagtar to remain imprisoned and facing a death sentence after this acquittal would be a mockery of justice. The eight essentially duplicate cases against him flagrantly violate the ‘double jeopardy’ principle, which protects people from being put on trial twice for the same crime and is enshrined in both international and Indian law. The remaining cases against him should be dropped, and Jagtar set free.”
The Guardian reports that this ruling is likely to lead to pressure on the UK Foreign Office to seek Jagtar Singh Johal’s release.